


Lighthouse

by DeusLux



Series: WOW Short Reads [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fire, Ghosts, Haunting, Horror, Inspired by Music, Lesbian Character, Lighthouses, Seaside, Songfic, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6663850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeusLux/pseuds/DeusLux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We went in, we climbed up and looked out<br/>The door locked from the outside<br/>Three ghosts in a lighthouse"<br/>-The Hush Sound</p>
<p>Jenni and Nadine flee their burning city to the coast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lighthouse

 Jenni and Nadine watched the fire from their dining room window. It was mostly smoke right now but it had been burning nearly three days now. It made the skies dark and the air hard to breathe. They had been sent home from work early when it spread from the food district to the East quarter of the shopping district and the edge of the industrial district.

 Now it had consumed the industrial district, moved to the North quarter of the district and West to the residential district. Nadine stood from the table and wandered over to the window. She touched the panel of glass nearest to her and gazed solemnly at the orange brown smoke bellowing and consuming the sky over the neighbour’s roof.

 She stepped away and walked to the door and wandered outside, her shirt billowing with the wind. Jenni watched her, concern playing on her delicate features. She stood and walked after Nadine.

 She stood in the doorway and watched her love as she scanned the sky, her thick, tight curls swirling loose of her bobble, “They can’t put it out, can they?”

 Jenni coughed. She clenched her dress close to her legs and walked out into the courtyard to join Nadine in watching the sky.

 “No… I don’t think they can any more. They just have to let it take its course.” Jenni sighed deeply. She placed a hand on Nadine’s shoulder “We should go before it reaches here. It might tonight, it might tomorrow, so it’s best to leave now.”

 “But the house?”

 “The house can be rebuilt. We can’t. Let’s take what we need and leave. We only have a short time.”

 Nadine stared at her, sadly. Eventually she nodded and walked briskly back into the house. She took one last sullen look at the sky before joining her. She lifted the dishes, meals half eaten, and brought them to the sink and washed them methodically.

 Her home might not be there when she returned but she wanted it to die as it was in life. Neat, warm, and welcoming.

 Upstairs, Nadine brought two suitcases out from under the bed and opened them hastily. She opened the wardrobe and quickly grabbed their two thick winter coats. She also grabbed their winter boots. It was best to have something sturdy as least. She dug out underwear and clothes for both of them from the drawers, a packet of pads in case they were gone for a while. She ran into the bathroom and grabbed their wash clothes, towels and toothbrushes. She ran back in, snatching the brush off the neat vanity and shoved it into the suitcases hastily.

 She was about to get the photo album when she caught another glimpse outside. The attic conversion gave her a clear view over the houses at the blaze. It was bright and menacing looking. Was that what death truly looked like, she wondered.

 Shaking her head, she grabbed the photo album and shoved the thick book into the nearest suitcase. Hastily, she closed them and shoved her coat on and her boots. Her fingers felt big and clumsy as she laced them, like she was a child again.

 Jenni had taken out the medical kit and a poetry book from the shelf. She turned off the lights as she went around the house and locked the front door as she went. She came back into the kitchen and started taking food out when Nadine jumped the last three steps and slammed the suitcases onto the floor. She raced to the cellar door, down the stairs, and over to the storage cupboard. She pulled a pair of sleeping bags and a tent from the cupboard and dragged them hastily upstairs.

 Jenni was boiling the kettle as she pulled her boots on and laced them under her dress. She had set out two thermos mugs with tea in them. Nadine came back in and pulled a backpack from the closet in the hallway and clipped the sleeping bags and tent to it.

 Jenni stood when the kettle clicked and poured the water into thermos. She stirred the water. Whilst that was being done, Nadine took a backpack out of the cupboard in the hallway. She packed as much food from the cupboards and a first-aid kit into the back. She secured these, then pulled her coat on. She grabbed both suitcases and the backpack and carried them outside.

 In the shared garden shed was her bike. She pulled it free and placed the two suitcases on the carry rack. Once they were secure, she flung the backpack into the basket at the front and brought the bike out of the shed.

 When Jenni came out, she was wearing her coat and scarf. She took the backpack out of the basket and replaced it with the two thermos. She hooked the straps of the bag on her back and followed Nadine as she guided the bike out. She quickly opened the gate for her and locked that as well when she was out herself. She then jumped onto the back of the bike and they set off down the street.

 “Where should we head?” Jenni asked.

 “The coast, there’s a couple of fishing huts down there that should be safe for the time being.” They rolled down the hill steadily. They had been living at the top of the high rise before the mountainous wastes to the North. The lazy outcrop of ground gave a fantastic view of the coastline from the highest buildings on a clear day.

 Though the weather had long since battered the original fishing town into oblivion many years before either of them were born, the new city they had always lived in had been reasonably peaceful until now. They had been born and had grown into adults in this city.

 And soon it would be ash.

 Jenni watched the flames as they cycled down the street. There were very few people about. Others, like them, were packing up and fleeing, many loading up carts with their valuables and belongings. Everything was surreal, like a nightmare before the terror hits. The unnerving surety of something amiss.

 There was one child running around without shoes, dirty and shell shocked. There was an old man helping his wife onto a horse trap, petting her hand as she wept, their dog pulling frantically at its lead.

 They bypassed the butchers and the bakery, little Daresay Café which had been run by a friendly window and her son and daughter-in-law. Someone had been stabbed outside the vegetable market, their body lying in a black pool.

 Nadine hit several bumps and nearly lost control, but managed to somehow maintain their balance, the thermos rattling about in the basket in front of them. Not once did Jenni take her eyes off the smoke and fire just visible about the rooftops. They made an angry black silhouette against the stark orange skyline.

 They followed the road until the buildings started filtering out. The terrace buildings started to become separate, with small gardens and gates and the remains of washing out the front. They became more sweet and homely until the brick turned to stone and the tiles turned to thatch and the houses became cottages with hedgerows and well-tended flower beds and assorted fencing.

 They passed the last house some ten minutes after they started. It was a cottage with once beautiful climbing flowers which had died in the smoke and ash, and a dirty pond which had lost its glimmer.

 The road quickly became less maintained from that point, though still tarmacked. The potholes said otherwise. They shuddered around awkwardly, causing the thermos to jump and rattle loudly. Jenni wound her arms tighter around Nadine’s waist. The city was behind her and she stopped trying to watch the blaze.

 They followed the trail until the road turned from tarmac to dirty road, grass grounding between the two sides of the road. It was quiet now, compared to the constant buzzing of the flames. The air was thinning out now, the thick smog of smoke.

 The cliffs were grassy with heather and bracken, light, swaying in contrast with the darkening sky. Jenni looked up at the sky above the distant waters. There was a fenced trail that lead away from the road. The gravel road was even bumpier than the last, the stones flicking up and hitting their feet as they cycled onwards, the hills and mounds sending them up and down again and again.

 The path led to the cliffs, where a winding walkway down to the sandy beach, and the sea caves off to the right where the waves were now pounding against the rock. Above the sea caves was a lighthouse, though the light had long gone out when the roads to the West Capital were opened.

 The path brought them past a bench and old chippy which was now boarded up and a small flag fluttering frantically from its roof. There were benches that lined this cliff side, and Jenni had a sudden flash of a memory from long ago. She and Nadine had just been dating a year and they had come up to the cliffs and had a picnic on a spring day. It had been chilly and windy but bright and the flowers had been blooming in an array of colours like the butterflies which flittered from one to another.

 The sky was nearly black here, but it was no longer the due to the fire. The wind was biting into their cheeks. The clouds were rolling lazily inwards. There was the smell of a storm in the air and it was growing steadily colder.

 The path came close to the cliff, the bracken swayed madly in the winds. They slowed to a stop where the fence that protected from the fall had partially taken the plunge itself. Jenni jumped off when Nadine stopped, propping herself on one leg. She was panting and Jenni hugged her.

 Once she had recovered her breath, she pointed down towards the path carved into the slope downwards, which was too steep and high to navigate straight down on.

 “If we follow that trail down, the fishing huts are down there. They should be empty this time of year.”

 Jenni was focusing on the horizon, her expression melancholy. She looked down as the churning waters, then across at the arch of cliff over the waters. Above the cave was a lighthouse. Long ago, the lighthouse had been the bright light of the city, its lamp casting an angelic path for the lost sailors on dark nights. Now it was a corpse, an empty shell of the old well. Long ago, the keeper had left in a fit of forgetfulness in his later years and had never been replaced.

 She heaved a sigh and turned to her, “There is a lighthouse five hundred yards down, you and I will be safe there.”

 Nadine grimaced, she looked back and forth from the beach to the lighthouse, suddenly dumb and confused and open mouthed “Why…?”

 “Why not? There’s a storm coming, those little huts won’t protect us, even with the tent.”

 Nadine still looked upset. She shook her head, “There’s a girl who haunts that lighthouse. I know, I heard her once, she saved me. I was swimming, but the tide came in and caught me off guard. I was so young that I nearly drowned, I didn’t have to strength to swim to shore. I slipped under at one point and I could hear her singing through the waves. It kept my focus and I thought I must have been near the shore, it gave me the strength to swim back up to the surface again. I had been washed near the beach again and was able to drift back to the sands. I can even remember the song she sang as well. It was so clear. She was singing about a lover she had lost.”

 Jenni looked completely befuddled by the story. She had heard it before but the ghost in the lighthouse was something she didn’t pay much attention to. The rest of Killead might have completely accepted the concept of ghosts and the supernatural as something that was just as real as the clouds in the sky and the grass in the ground, but she had little time for such things. They were nothing to her. She was a Westerner, she was no-nonsense and forthright.

 “Love, you’re being foolish and you’re exhausted, your sleeplessness makes you a liar. There’s no other real place to go. The city is in flames and a storm’s coming in. Our only chance is the lighthouse. This nonsense about ghosts, just let dead men lie.”

 Nadine stared intently at her and for a few seconds, Jenni thought she was going argue, but her eyes flickered briefly over the horizon and towards the lighthouse. Eventually she licked her lips and nodded hesitantly.

 They walked slowly towards the lighthouse. The path was too bumpy for the bags and the gale too strong for them to cycle any further. Jenni glanced across at Nadine, who was staring reluctantly at the faded whitewashed pebbledash.

 “So, tell me more about this ghost story, it might give us something to think about when we arrive and settle down for the night.” She suggested, a slight smile on her pale face.

 Nadine looked doubtful at her. She didn’t reply and Jenni wondered if she had hurt her more than she thought when she started, “There was this woman who lived here just after Old McGugan got spirited away, she was a bit younger than us and she was pretty. The sailors who came to stay loved to catcall her but it was someone from her town who she fell for.

 “They were happy briefly, even though they were living in sin. Everyone knew what was happening, back when the Church still had some power in these parts. They were scorned in the streets and everyone rejected them. But eventually their happiness ended when she fell pregnant to the sailor, who was less than happy about that. He, like all good sailors, liked to put his hands in her pockets but didn’t like the thought of leaving fingerprints behind.

 “He asked her to run away with him, to a place more accepting of their child. She agreed but they would have to sneak away, lest they lynch him for leaving her like that unmarried. He told her to meet him in the lighthouse and he would come and take her on a boat away from here. So she went and waited there.

 “She waited for hours until the dead of night, but he never came. Thinking he had been lynched, she went to return home but the door locked from the outside and she became trapped. She waited for someone to notice her missing but no one showed up. They say she died up there, her bones crystallised by the salt air. Her ghost now wanders the lighthouse, searching for her lover. It’s said that she sings and the wind carries her voice out to sea. The sailors are enchanted by her haunting voice, turning off course to seek her out. She does it to kill the man who betrayed her.”

 “How alarming.” Jenni giggled. Of course the ships would go off course, without the light to guide them away from the shore.

 They arrived at the lighthouse just before the rains properly started. Nadine looked back as Jenni entered, “Do you think that the rain will quench the blaze some?”

 “Hopefully, we’ll see by morning no doubt.”

 Nadine propped the bike against the inside of the building. Jenni had taken off her backpack and was ascending the stairwell. She wanted to look outside from the top, they would have a good view of the city from it, and the beach.

 She gasped at the incredible view, the beach was dark but she could still see the colourful little huts that lined the cliff side. The city was clear as well, the orange glow was blinding from here. Nadine joined her on the walkway. She circled round and joined her in gazing at the city.

 It was terrifying to watch their home burning.

 Nadine snaked her arm around her partner and Jenni turned to press against her, resting her head on her dark haired love. They embraced for a while and Jenni found herself crying. They may very well become homeless soon. She pulled away to wipe her tears when she heard the distinctive clank of a metal door slamming shut.

 “The wind’s caught it hun, don’t worry about it.” Jenni said but Nadine was already pulling away from her and running down the steps.

 She followed, angered by her partner’s foolishness when she heard the locking mechanism. Nadine hit the bottom flight with a thump, and yanked the door, which was so firmly wedged shut that it made no noise.

 “It’s locked! Jenni! It’s locked, it’s locked! We’re trapped! Oh God we’re trapped!” she screamed. The shock hit her like a bullet in the chest. Slowly, she sank to the floor, gripping the railing, the cold chill of dread and fear clinging to her like wet clothes. She started to giggle hysterically, the sound mingling with her lover’s screams.

 Three ghosts in the lighthouse.

 


End file.
